For her second production at Schauspielhaus Bochum after Lorenzaccio by Alfred de Musset, Nora Schlocker will tackle a contemporary text, the 100 freely composable scenes of the play [BLANK] by renowned British writer Alice Birch. Three teenagers try to make the perfect Instagram video of a girl's murder. A woman wakes up to her daughter breaking into her flat looking for money. In a child's bedroom, a line of tape marks an impassable border. A desperate woman begs for entry outside a women's shelter. And the self-satisfied banter of an intellectual circle of friends comes to a standstill when one of those present angrily questions the self-image and supposed tolerance on display.

This play is about the omnipresent experiences of violence and the use of violence, about what it can mean to grow up in an environment of crime, drugs and abuse, without the protection of parents who, helpless in the face of these overarching mechanisms, no longer know, let alone can exemplify, what love and security mean. [BLANK] shows children and families who come into contact with the penalty and social system, their efforts to break out of the cycle of violence and abuse, the inadequacy of the institutions, the ignorance of others. But at the same time, the longing for connection, love, moments of caring and surprising humour. Depending on the choice of scenes, connections, varying stories emerge - and at the same time characters who are more than the sum of their injuries.

Alice Birch is one of the most sought-after voices on the young British literary scene. She writes for theatre and film and has won many awards, including the British Independent Film Award, the Turin Film Festival Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for English-language playwrights. "Fascinating, emotionally precise, poetic, yet never pretentious or implausible ... the players* shift between roles like ghosts whose fluid identities ask whether we choose our lives and how we can resist them." (Time Out)

Note: Absolute darkness in the hall for a few minutes at the beginning of the performance, security is ensured by night vision surveillance